“I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.” 

Why does the movie Office Space seem to resonate with so many of us? Simple: purpose. If you tell me to a dig a ditch and then fill it in again, with no defined purpose or goal, eventually even money will lose its luster. There is a drive, a conviction inside that doesn’t sit quietly with the notion that we should just “get by.” Even Peter (from the movie) recognizes this. So the problem it would seem is that we need to stop working on things, expending ourselves, on things that ultimately don’t matter.

This seems pretty straightforward: “don’t do things that don’t matter” but it isn’t. We spend hours upon hours engaged in tasks that ultimately have little or no consequence on what we finally “ship” (to use Seth Godin’s terminology). I’m not necessarily saying you need to give up reality TV (though it might not be a terrible idea to do so) but what if you decided each day as you went to work that you wouldn’t expend brain cycles, energy, and effort to complete tasks that in no way augment your end product? 

I am in education. That is the arena in which I have decided to try and make the most impact. Specifically, I am engaged in classroom instruction with 7th and 8th graders. As noble a profession as teaching seems to be, I would guess that about 20-30% of my job actually involves teaching as you or I think about it. The remainder of the time is spent attending meetings, sifting through emails, going to more meetings, reading emails about meetings, getting pulled out of my planning time (or worse… class time) to troubleshoot computer problems, attending extra-curricular activities, and once in a while, preparing for what I intend to teach the next time I have the opportunity to meet with my students. This also assumes that every single minute with my students is completely beneficial to learning and changing the society we live in. I’ll be the first to tell you, it isn’t. Not 100% of the time, at least. I’m guessing you’re a lot like me. You get sick. You stay up too late on Sunday nights. You phone it in from time to time. You give a worksheet in lieu of creating something transformative. You throw together a PowerPoint instead of planning, scripting, and creating an interactive multimedia masterpiece. It is easier, after all. But does it matter?

So, consider this a call, a mini-manifesto: Stop doing work that doesn’t matter. Better yet, stop thinking that just because you’re busy, you’re engaged in work that actually matters.

You only get so much time in a day (and we all know there isn’t enough to begin with). You only get so many days with your students. You only get so many revolutions around the sun. Engage yourself in work that truly matters. Find creative and innovative ways to change the world around you. Start something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be successful (in fact, it probably won’t be) but at least try. Work that matters begins when you decide for it to begin. Work that doesn’t matter will always be there. If you don’t like this new proposal, you can always go back to filling out cover sheets for TPS reports.